Eric Pankey Diagram

"Whether the first person here is a persona adopted by Phillips, or the empirical Phillips, himself, is a moot point; Phillips’ taut and slightly driven syntax certainly feels personal. And what the poem offers is an exploration of a kind of truth. That Phillips is so successful in persuading the reader that she is reading truths is down to the precision and elegance of that syntax. The reader is taken in at the start of the sentence, the verse paragraph, the whole poem and then let go at the end. To read Carl Phillips is, as has been said by others, to be read by him. Phillips’ querulous, querying syntax seems to inhabit part of the human condition." Ian Pople The Manchester Review